Margaret Green NEAC Biography

Hailing from Hartlepool, County Durham, Margaret Green determined on life as an artist after a youthful encounter with Patrick Heron on a family holiday in Yorkshire. Graduating from her local art school with a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art, then displaced by war to the Lake District, she continued to gather up hearts and prizes, but her biggest coup was discovering her life-long companion, Lionel Bulmer.

Based in Chelsea after the war, and teaching in art schools to buy time for painting, the couple produced pictures of London parks, streets and embankments before looking further afield to the Sussex countryside and shore. They made a more lasting move to the Suffolk countryside on the discovery of their ancient Suffolk hall house in its own wilderness near Stowmarket. There they made their own private paradise.

Margaret’s paintings became smaller, subtler and more intimate as time progressed, but when painting by the sea or along the Blyth estuary she emerged as an artist of assured techniques and ambitions. Her reticent yet acutely observed pictures were exhibited at the Royal Academy with the London Group, as well as with the NEAC. Examples of her work are held in Tate Britain, the Government Art Collection and many public galleries.

The Lionel Bulmer and Margaret Green Studio Estate is represented by Messum’s. The last major exhibition of her work was in 2005, ‘Partners in Paint: Lionel Bulmer and Margaret Green’, with an essay by Ian Collins.